It Snowed

Happy Birthday

I am 31 years old today! Happy Birthday to me! We had a pretty uneventful but great day today. We went to the New Albanian Brewing Company for lunch and had some pizza and brew; had a visit from my sister and fam; then ended the day with Homemade Ice Cream and Pie Kitchen. It really was a great day with just our small family...wouldn't trade this time in our life for anything.

Enjoying my beverage...I think it was called Tafelbier (don't quote me on that one)

Ruby loves wearing these glasses...I liked the art work in the background.
It is the logo for one of their beers called Elector.

Telia was snoozing the whole time we were eating

Brian and Ruby

Meal Plan

It is not Monday but I am indeed making a meal plan

Friday- Pizza and salad

Saturday- My Birthday so hopefully we will go out

Sunday- Maybe birthday brunch with my parents and White Bean and Pasta Soup for din din (recipe my friend Kristyn gave me)

Monday- Cabbage and Chicken Sausage (like Aidells) with baked red potatoes
We just dice the cabbage and cook it in some olive oil and some spices. We like it kind of crunchy. Pretty good for ya and tasty

Tuesday- Spinach Tortellini Soup with crusty bread

Wednesday- leftovers

Thursday- Red beans and rice with greens and cornbread

Our Girls

I am very much in the thick of life with 2 kids, managing my home, loving my husband well, giving a lot to our community group and other friends outside of community group therefore, I haven't been posting much. Here is a quick update on our precious girls.

Telia is now 2 months old and is amazing us at how healthy and big she is. Seriously, we are not used to having a baby with chubby rolls on her legs, neck, and arms. I am faced with a new challenge of keeping those rolls clean and dry. :) I had to pull out the 3 to 6 months clothes for her last night! Telia is such a happy baby who smiles all the time and really only cries when she is tired, hungry, wet/dirty, or has gas. She is more awake during the day and has started sleeping longer stretches at night. She went for her 2 month check up this week and was in the 80th percentile for weight (12 pounds 5 oz) and the 75th percentile for height (23 inches).

Ruby is changing so much from week to week. She talks a lot and has started making up her own songs about her friends (usually Nora or Lilly) or what she is doing. She loves to pretend with her stuffed animals (especially her new hippo from Uncle John and Sharon) and likes to make us coffee and bubbles (soda) in her toy dishes and food. She is pretty good with Telia and this week asked to hold her a few times. She cooks and cleans with me everyday and although this can be quite messy I really do treasure those times. She wrestles, reads, sings, and prays with Daddy every night. Tonight she kept calling him "Dad" and we thought she sounded so grown up. She has recently developed a love for the green smoothies (smoovies as she calls them) that we make several days a week.

Here are some pics of this week and the one above is from Christmas.

Telia all bundled up and ready to go out into the world

Ruby modeling her princess dress

Telia at 2 months

Ruby was not actually praying here but somehow
I got a pic that looks like she was and thought it was cute

A Bowling Green Christmas 2009

Ruby scoping out the gifts with Uncle John

Ruby loved playing the piano and singing with her Grandma

Brian with his gift from his parents

Telia just looking cute on her first Christmas

A Look at 2009

Hello, this is Brian. I don’t normally post here, but this year I wanted to re-cap some important events that happened in our life. It has been a year full of stressful challenges that has grown our faith. I wanted to cover some of the ways that God has provided for our family.

January – OT Challenge. Our church issued a challenge to read the Old Testament in one year. We didn’t know it yet but God was preparing us for a difficult year. We found comfort in God’s steadfast love for the Israelites. Especially in light of the times the Israelites were facing certain death and God made a way to save them.

March – Pregnancy. We found out that Tera was pregnant with our second daughter. We were very excited!

May – Layoff Announcement. After several rounds of nerve-racking layoffs, the company I worked for announced that they were closing due to the bad economy. By God’s grace they were able to announce a clear plan for how they would be closing the company. I was scheduled to be laid off in September and given a fair severance/bonus package.

August – Classes. Our church offered a Dave Ramsey class on Wednesday nights and we knew that a rock solid budget was very important - considering that unemployment for a few months was a very real possibility. This class was a blessing sent by God to give us Financial Peace (pun intended). In addition, I began to take a theology class that provided a lot of encouragement during this difficult time.

September – Job Interview. With my layoff date approaching quickly, I was able to get a job interview with a company in town. The job wasn’t a great fit for our family, but I was definitely qualified for it. We needed it to work out or we would be in trouble financially. In a strange twist of fate, they hired my boss instead of me and my current employer decided to keep me on in my bosses place. They paid my severance/bonus package as if I had been laid off, but communicated that they would employ me on a week-by-week basis until the end of the year (with all my benefits). God was certainly at work in this. In addition, I received a call from a former employer that they would like to hire me back at a future date - to be determined. It was not a sure thing, but due to God’s other work in our life, we were confident that he was providing for us yet again.

October – Toledo. As a condition of my continued employment, I agreed to go to Toledo every other week to supervise equipment installation. This was hectic for our family since Tera was 37+ weeks pregnant and considered full-term. We prayed that Telia would be born during one of the weeks that I was still in Louisville.

October – Home Repairs (Carpet/Insulation). Due to high energy bills the previous year, we knew that we needed to have these home repairs done. But since there was a lot of uncertainty in my job situation, it was risky to pay out a bunch of cash that we might need. Still, we were confident that God was at work so we proceeded to have the home repairs done.

October – Swine Flu (H1N1). The week we scheduled to have the home repairs done, the whole family came down with the swine flu. The first day I had it, I had to stand out in the rain all evening and feed insulation into the blowing machine for the attic repairs. Tera spent a whole day with Ruby and the flu cooped up with all of our belongings in the living room while our bedroom and Ruby’s was being carpeted. Talk about a difficult week.

October – EIT Exam. Since my work load had been light all summer, I knew it was the right time to consider pursuing my PE license (Professional Engineer). The first part of this process is to take an 8 hour grueling test called the EIT exam. I studied for it all summer (~120hrs) and took it on the 31st of October in between trips to Toledo, with Tera only 12 days away from her due date. Everything went well and I received a letter in December stating that I passed. It brought to mind the verse in Psalm 1 that states – he is like a tree that is planted by cool waters, which bears its fruit in season, his leaf does not wither.

November - Telia Abigail Laffin. Per our prayers, Telia was born during a week that I was not in Toledo. A few months prior, I noticed that Telia’s due date (11/12/09) was very close to being a sequential number (11/10/09) and Ruby’s birth date was also a sequential number (09/08/07). I prayed that God would send Telia on 11/10/09 as a good gift for our family. Tera went into labor at 6:30am on the 10th. After a quick and relatively easy delivery, Telia was born on 11/10/09. There were no complications for mother or baby and we're very thankful for God’s great blessing.

December – New Job. A former employer received the Notice to Proceed on a big transit project in NY and recommended that I apply to come work for them. My current employer laid me off two weeks earlier than I expected, but I was able to transition to the new job without missing a day of work. God provided for a seamless transition.

Psalm 1

BOOK I : Psalms 1-41

¹ Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.

² But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.

³ He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.

⁴ Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.

⁵ Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

⁶ For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.

Books

I am really excited about some of the books we got for Christmas and thought it was a blog worthy topic


Brian received the following books

Come thou Long Expected Jesus




Kentucky Off the Beaten Path


Filling Up the Afflictions of Christ


I got the following books:

The Green Smoothie Revolution

Treasuring God in Our Traditions


Ruby received

Full Moon Rising



Telia will be reading

Black on White